


Slay

by SapphoIsBurning



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Backstage, Crying, F/M, Intrusive Thoughts, Non-Consensual Touching, Slow Burn, Triggers, catcalling, sorry Dolph is the bad guy in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-08-22 22:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8303672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphoIsBurning/pseuds/SapphoIsBurning
Summary: Alexa makes enemies and allies after being drafted to the blue team. Some of those enemies have bad personal boundaries. Some of those allies have cake.   OR: Alexa's life is kind of a mess. Dean knows what that is like. He does what he can to help.





	1. Having Your Cake

It always starts the same, someone touching you when you don't want it. Alexa was backstage at that first Smackdown, her new home she guessed, and she was pretty much minding her own business of being a raw bitch with no fucks to give, when Dolph fucking Ziggler came up from behind her.

"Hey baby, heard you used to be a cheerleader," he said, putting his hands around her waist and lifting her up into the air. “So did I.”

"LET GO," she shrieked, kicking him hard in the chest. She screamed wordlessly and thrashed and hit him and was about to claw his face when he tossed her down. She staggered back, clutching her body.

Someone came running around a corner, looking disheveled but carrying some serious metal over his shoulder. Dean looked between her and Ziggler. "Zig, what the fuck are you doing back here, get the fuck away from her."

Dolph put his hands up. "I barely touched her! I just wanted to test out her cheerleading skills and she screamed like she was being raped, what the fuck." He backed away but Dean got between him and Alexa, who was shaking with rage, too angry to even say anything. She was trying not to hyperventilate but it was hard.

Dean turned around to look at her. He was a lot taller than Alexa so he tried to give her some space. "Jesus, what an asshole. Are you okay?"

She drew in a shaky breath. "Do I fucking look okay?"

"Nope."

"Great observation," she snapped, her voice cracking. Being shitty helped a little even if Dean probably didn't deserve it, though he seemed to take it in stride.

He started to say something and then stopped, sighing a little and brushing his hair out of his eyes for a minute. When he looked up to meet her gaze she saw how blue his eyes really were.

"Sorry," she said. She felt cold all over and the tears were starting to gather in earnest now in the inside corners of her eyes.

"Fuck, why are you apologizing." At that a gaffer wandered in from an adjoining hallway, looked around, then kept walking. Nothing to scream about here, not anymore.

Dean ducked out after that.

Later, she did her runout that didn’t even lead to a match and she was fine and pretty and evil like always, though she also felt small and naked and watched, the eyes of a huge arena and live viewers on her. She didn’t hyperventilate. She didn’t pick at her skin. She curled her toes back and forth inside her boots until they ached, and then she made her exit.

Once she was backstage, she checked in with the producers in gorilla to make sure she did alright, and then bolted. She wasn't even going anywhere in particular, just avoiding eye contact and trying to move quickly. Eventually she found herself in an echoing, empty back part of the arena. She hopped up on top of a pile of mats and let out a sob. She tucked her legs up and curled into a ball in the fetal position and closed her eyes. Some tears leaked out but she tried to go to her nowhere place, the place where no one could touch her. She imagined herself lifting a heavy weight and then dropping it, over and over. She imagined dropping the weight until the floor cracked and until the ground crumbled beneath her feet and she fell endlessly, floating in a deep, dark abyss.

She smelled cigarette smoke and heard a door slam somewhere nearby, but she ignored it. She tried to make herself small and shrink into the dark corner as she heard footsteps go by, and they passed without noticing her, or so she thought, until she heard footsteps come back.

"Hey," a raspy voice said. She opened her eyes and saw Dean standing a distance away, wearing his leather jacket, carrying a plate with a piece of cake on it and two forks. "I'll go away if you want, but I was hiding out back here catching a smoke and I thought you might use a pick me up. If you don't want a smoke, that is. Do you smoke?" He screwed up his face with the question.

"No," Alexa said icily.

"More for me," Dean said genially.

She sighed and pulled herself to sit up, legs dangling off the pile of mats. "What kind of cake is it," she said flatly.

"Dunno, haven't tried it." He set down the plate between them and joined her.

She picked up a fork and took a minuscule bit of icing and cake off the top. She tasted it. "Vanilla," she shrugged.

"I was hoping it was white chocolate. It usually isn't, but there's always hope."

That made Alexa laugh involuntarily, like one laugh escaped her clutches and floated up to the high barred ceiling of the storage area. The she sniffled and the laugh turned into a sob she couldn't control, a flood.

Dean didn't say anything but he reached into his pocket and pulled out a neatly folded wad of toilet paper. He handed it to her. "Couldn't find any kleenex," he said.

She hiccuped and tried to speak, but not much was coming out except more sobs.

"S'okay. Want some water?" He pulled out a bottle from an inside pocket of his jacket and set that down between them too. Without looking at him she picked it up, cracked the cap, and drank deeply. She took a shaky breath and blew it out. She put the water down and blew her nose. Then she picked up the plate of cake and took a big bite. Dean sat with her in silence, leaning his back against the concrete wall behind the mats they were perched on.

"It gets easier," Dean said after a while, grabbing the second fork and jabbing at a glob of frosting. He ate the frosting and then gestured with the fork. "All of this. And that. You know. With time." He gulped. "You know what I mean."

Alexa swallowed and nodded. "What am I even crying about, I didn’t even wrestle." She picked at her face, feeling her false eyelashes starting to peel off. She pulled them off one at a time and then stared at them in her hand like muddy centipedes.

"I always wanted to try those," Dean said. "None of the makeup crew ever let me."

He held his hand out. Alexa put the falsies into his open palm. He tried to stick them on his own face with the remaining glue but only one stayed. The other one fell down and landed in the mostly empty cake plate.

"How do I look?" Dean asked, batting his eyes.

"Very Clockwork Orange," Alexa said, getting control over the shaking in her voice.

Dean frowned. "Is that the one with the ultraviolence? And like the hat guy?"

She nodded.

He pulled the eyelash off. "I was hoping for more of a Dolly Parton look. Maybe another time." Alexa couldn’t tell if he was kidding, but she liked the idea of him all made up, even if she wasn't feeling brave enough to say it out loud.

"Are these ruined? What about the cake one?" he asked.

"I’ll clean them. I could probably wear them one more time."

"But...cake. Can I spot you for a new pair?"

She pushed her tongue into her cheek. "Okay."

He stuck out his hand and grinned like a jackass. She shook it. His hand were warm and not quite as rough as she expected.

"Someone is probably missing you, champ," she said.

"Probably," he shrugged. "Let ‘em wait."

Alexa sighed a small sigh and hopped down off the pile of mats. She had almost but not quite forgotten the feeling of someone’s hands on her without her permission but being up in the air for just that second as she jumped down made her feel cold all over again.

Dean followed her down. "Come on, Bliss. I know the combination to Ziggler’s locker. Let’s...I dunno, fucking steal his shoelaces."

She scowled but it was actually the early beginnings of a fond scowl, if you knew how to read her scowls. "Is that the best you’ve got?"

"Don’t got much time before he comes back. Can’t freeze anything in a block of ice without...an hour. A good hour. Do we have an hour?"

She nodded. "I’ve never hidden anyone’s keys before...could be something."

Dean’s face lit up. "Bliss! It really could be something." He moved to put his hand on the small of her back but stopped himself and held out an elbow instead. She considered for a moment, then threaded her arm through it.

Maybe it does get easier, she thought.


	2. Run, Runner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alexa's first weekend home from the Smackdown roster goes as well as any time she has to herself. But at least she's got someone to text.

After that first Smackdown, everybody got to go home, or at least go somewhere. Dean swore there was a "bangin' 7-11" two blocks from the arena, but Alexa politely excused herself after exchanging numbers. She had had enough salt. And enough people. She got to her rental car, got to the airport, and went home.

She was still based out of Orlando, for now. It was either stay where she was or move back in with her parents, and like hell was she ever moving back to Columbus. Except on the days when she missed it, or someone made fun of her for saying pop, or when she missed seeing the seasons, or any time she saw a lizard or read about a baby getting eaten by an alligator or any of the other awful daily indignities of Florida living. Actually, she hated Orlando aside from the sunshine and maybe the fact that eighty million other wrestlers lived there so she could socialize without having to explain her job. But. Her exes also lived there. That was a bonus.

"I need to get out of Florida," she thought to herself as she left the airport. She was hit with a wave of moist heat, like a curtain of boiling wet naps. Her Uber driver was a weirdo who wanted to talk about fluoride in the water, and she just nodded until she could pay and escape.

Her apartment was as she left it: bras everywhere, piles of books and drawings of new entrance gear ideas and half-finished craft projects. It was hard enough to keep it up when she came home to it every day: it was a lost cause now. Things were better when she had roommates but she broke up with those roommates soooooo nobody to pick up her shit but her, now.

She dropped her suitcase by the door, locking the deadbolt behind her, hit the thermostat to crank the air, and flopped down on her couch. She pressed her face into a crocheted afghan her mom had made her before she moved away: a good gift in Ohio, a little impractical in Florida except when you over-refrigerated the apartment.

She didn't mean to drift off but it was very late and no one would know if she didn't brush her teeth or change her underwear. She woke up to the sun poking through her blinds and her phone vibrating like somebody had texted it or something.

Somebody had texted it.

"What's the weirdest food you've ever ate?" Received Wednesday 9:45 am

"Who is this and how did you get this number"

"It's me Dean"

attachment downloading

Dean texted her a picture of himself looking sleepy and eating a bowl of corn flakes with...a hot dog floating in them? He was wearing a Cincinnati Bengals tee-shirt. Right. Cincinnati. She didn’t think they ate hot dog cereal there but it was kind of a strange town.

Then she remembered giving him her number. She must have forgotten to get his.

"Sorry."

"You didn't answer my question weird food go go go"

She thought for a minute, rolling off the couch onto the floor and into a stretch, feeling the scar tissue in her hamstring that had never quite worked itself out after she tore one cheerleading a decade ago. She felt herself assume her normal morning yoga poses. Her phone sat on the floor in front of her as she did a few.

"Cheetos and chocolate syrup?" She typed with one hand while she leaned down into a pigeon pose. Probably wasn't apropos to text during yoga, but again, who was here to even know?

"Good answer" Dean texted back, and she didn't hear from him the rest of the day.

***

Thursday, she dragged herself to her car to drag herself to the ATM to drag herself to the store that had a change machine and she got two rolls of quarters. She dumped them into her purse and she didn't even clock the guy who whistled at her when she walked out of the store and back to her car. She started the car. She didn't look back. She wanted to collect his scrotum. She didn't.

She sorted her clothes and threw a bunch of things into a hamper, propping it up on one hip to haul to the laundry room down a flight of stairs. One washer was free, and she dumped her stuff in it.

She forgot the quarters.

She left the hamper sitting on top of the washer with her clothes in, hoping nobody came in and took them out. She got the quarters. She went back down the stairs.

Soap. No soap. Soap's upstairs. Back she went.

At the top of the stairs she grabbed her phone and her headphones and her keys. She got down to the laundry room, dumped soap in, fumbled to fit quarters into the slots, started the washer.

"This is fine. I can do this. Fuck my life, I hate everything," she thought all at once.

She slammed the outside door to the building behind her and took off running. She headed in the opposite of her usual direction, heading towards the strip malls instead of the park. Everything's fine. As long as she kept moving, everything felt fine and nothing felt like it was going to explode or collapse.

She ran along a semi-busy road, wincing at how close cars came to the curb. She turned down a side street, feeling sweat drip down her face, feeling the air in her lungs like gravy. A car sped by with its window down. "Hey, baby! Run, baby!" Someone screamed out of the window.

"What is your fucking problem!" She screamed back. "Fuck you and your fucking life, fuck all your everything!" Another car drove by, windows down, kids in the front and the back. Alexa felt the dirty look the woman driving gave her without even making eye contact.

She dropped into a crouch, trying to catch her breath and staunch the flow of bad, horrible, injurious ideas coming into her head. She dropped to her knees, feeling the crumbly pavement dig into her skin.

Her phone buzzed. It was from Dean.

"Do you believe in the sasquatch"

She focused on the text. The sasquatch.

"Is that like bigfoot" she replied.

"Yes and no, but believing in one or the other is good enough for me"

"Why should I"

"Why not"

"Convince me"

He texted her a link that went to some 1998-looking web page about sasquatch sightings in the pacific northwest.

She got back to her feet. She tapped at the screen and the phone rang in her headphones.

"Y'ello?" Dean answered.

"Hi Dean," she said.

"Hi."

"Um," she said shakily. "Can you tell me everything you know about the sasquatch?"

With his voice in her ear, she ran and ran until her legs were burning and she was at her own front door.

"So do you believe now, after all that evidence?"

"Yeah," she said. "I think I do."


	3. Night Moves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alexa has a bad night and Dean talks her down, through a wall at first and then in person.

“I would rather die than go on living this way,” Alexa said to herself. She put toothpaste on the toothbrush. "I would rather die than go on living this way." She put the plastic tool into her mouth and moved it around. It was like Groundhog Day. Every day the same, same shit different town, get up and go on, find a gym, find a place to eat, be there for hair and makeup, do some backflips, try not to die. Get in the rental car and go someplace else.

“You don't want to die,” she said out loud, and then spat. She rinsed her mouth and spat again. “You don't want to die. You just feel rotten. I hate my life but it's better than the alternative.” She downed a couple of advil. She got out a blue plastic paddle brush and sat down on the closed toilet lid to take it to her hair. “Everything's fine. This is the new normal, I guess. One day at a time. It gets easier. Dean said it gets easier.” She thought about Dean. What was he doing right now? She didn't even know for sure who he roomed with, if anyone. Carmella, who had become Alexa's default roommate on the road, had gone out with some friends and who knows when she'd be back.

Twenty strokes. Thirty strokes. Her hair fell in flat, straight panes on both sides of her head. She put the brush away and left the bathroom, pushing some buttons on a confusing light switch to shut the light off. She threw the cover off the bed and slid in, her phone already charging on the nightstand next to her. She turned on the tv—after a few seconds delay it sprang on with an electromagnetic whoom.

Being on the main roster was supposed to feel different. It was supposed to feel better. And it did feel different being in front of the larger crowds, she couldn't say that wasn't true. But it wasn't a good different. She was at the place where there were just that many more chances to fuck up and embarrass herself, embarrass herself in front of that many more people, live. Live on national television, no big deal, just that every single second will be made into a gif, and also she could die at any second. She could fall and break her neck. It was a thing that could happen.

“I just have to be good enough to survive,” she said out loud. “One day at a time.”

She heard a knock at the door. Who would be bothering her here? Did anyone know where they all were staying? She had heard about fans bothering people and she grabbed her phone as she went to the door, ready to call the front desk if there was a problem.

She had left the deadbolt and the chain on the door, and she peered up through the fisheye peephole. There was Dean, looking sleepy and rumpled and concerned.

She opened the door without taking the chain off. “What? What’s wrong?” She asked. “I didn’t know you were staying here too.”

“I’m next door,” Dean said. “Are *you* okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, not understanding.

“Are you sure? These walls are not that thick and you don’t sound fine.”

She flushed with embarrassment. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Okay,” Dean said, scratching the back of his neck. “Well, I’m in 422 if you need anything. Really. Fuckin’ anything. Text me. Call. Knock. Whatever. You got a roommate this leg?”

“Carmella. She’s out. Not sure when she’ll be back.”

Dean nodded. “”kay.” He saluted and went back to his room.

Alexa let the door drift shut and she flopped back on the bed. She changed the channels, looking for anything to distract her. Her phone reflected the yellow hotel room lighting off its screen.

She grabbed it and detached it from the charger. “Is there anything good on tv” she texted Dean. This is silly, she thought.

The phone buzzed. “TV is never good”

She let out a laugh that was more like a sigh and kept hitting the up arrow on the remote. 

There was another buzz. “Which sharknado movie is this”

“Don’t know, never seen any of them” she texted. She landed on that channel and watched for a few minutes. A face she was familiar with in passing appeared on the screen and she did a double take.

“Is that Seth?” she texted Dean.

“Fuck, guess this is the fourth one” he replied.

It was a really bad movie. She wasn’t sure if Seth’s face helped or hurt. The writing was pretty bad. She knew it was supposed to be kind of bad but there was a difference between the kind of movie that’s entertainingly bad and one that’s just weird or dull.

“Did you like making your movie?” she texted.

“It was kind of a blur” he said. “It was fun tho and id do it again if they wanted to pay me” followed rapidly. Then: “Did you see it???”

She smiled to herself. Should she admit it? The NXT crowd had WWE movie nights from time to time. The Scooby-Doo ones were the most popular, but…

“I liked the part where you scotch taped your bullet wound :D” she wrote. She could hear him laugh from the next room. Guess the walls really were thin.

“poor man’s john mcclane, what I always dreamed of” he said. She could practically hear him saying it. Wait. She had heard him say it. He said it to himself and then texted it to her.

She got up on her knees and leaned against the wall where she could hear him. She knocked three times. “Keep it down, Ambrose,” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” he said.

She flopped down on the bed. She heard him start singing. “Working on my night moves. Trying to lose some awkward teenage blues. Working on a night moves. In the summertime. In the sweet summertime."

She sighed.

The singing went on. She got back up. "Are you singing into the wall? Is this on purpose?" She tried to to shout it too loud for the benefit of the people on the other side of her.

“You don't like Bob Seger? Everybody likes Bob Seger. I'm taking away your Ohio driver's license.”

“You can come over here and do it.”

He stopped singing and talking. Her phone buzzed in a minute. “Or you could come over here.”

She texted back. "That's the worst come on of all time"

"Not a come on just bored need friends help Alexa help" he wrote.

She frowned. She frowned at the shoes she slipped on and frowned at her NXT hoodie as she zipped it up and frowned at the key card to her room.

She knocked on Dean's door. He opened it, beer in hand. "Took you long enough."

She tried to scowl but it was late and she was tired so all she managed was mild disdain. Dean held the door open for her and she came into the room. His suitcase was propped up on a stand, sitting open, clothes partially spilling out. The TV was on quietly. One bed was rumpled and one bed was untouched.

"If you don't have a roommate, why didn't you get a king room," Alexa said, swinging up onto the empty bed.

He flopped back down on his side. "That would require planning ahead. Nobody really thinks of me as the planning ahead guy, you know?"

“So what are you watching now? I think Sharknado ended.”

“Nothing, just flipping. I can turn it off.”

“Why, so we can play parcheesi?” Alexa said, her cold tone betrayed by the way she curled her body around a pillow from the bed.

“What *is* parcheesi?” Dean asked. “It’s like a punchline, but nobody plays it?”

Alexa made a noise of agreement. “It’s like Sorry, but older? I don’t know. My family played it sometimes. It’s not that fun.”

Dean nodded. “You guys play a lot of games?”

“Yes. Yes, you could say that.” She looked off into space, not really focusing on the McDonalds commercial playing blandly on the tv screen. “My stepdad and my mom  wanted us all to get along. Not like Monopoly really ever helps anyone get along. You know how it is.” She looked over at Dean. “Do you know how it is?”

“No, but I can imagine. Got brothers and sisters?”

“Two sisters, three step-brothers, and a half-sister.”

Dean whistled low. “Regular Brady bunch,” he said.

“Oh yeah, totally like that,” Alexa said with practiced scorn.

“You get that a lot.”

“I have gotten that a lot,” she said.

“You’re Jan Brady,” Dean said with a little bit of feigned awe. “That explains so much.”

“Oh shut the fuck up,” she groaned, but not meanly.

“You guys close?”

“Kind of,” she said. “Carl’s a piece of work and his kids are idiots, but my mom...ugh. And my sisters. I just.” She stopped in the middle of a sentence.

“Yeah,” Dean said. He picked up the remote and started flipping again. Ancient Aliens. Commercial. Sports. Commercial. Cable news. Worse cable news. He stopped on a Weather Channel documentary about surviving natural disasters. 

“I left Ohio for a reason,” she said finally.

“Just one?” Dean asked.

“One big one,” she said.

“Ohio’s a pretty fucking big reason,” Dean rasped, and Alexa laughed.

“Yeah. Yeah it is,” she said with less defeat than she had felt earlier.

“Do you think you could survive an earthquake?” Dean asked her.

“Could you?”

“I’m a cockroach, baby,” Dean said, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “I can survive anything.”

She nodded. It was cold, and she didn’t want to get up, so she untucked the duvet from underneath her and crawled under it. She fluffed the pillows under her head and settled back down.

Dean got up and went to the bathroom. She heard the water run, heard shuffling and clinking of a million little nighttime routine items on the counter. She closed her eyes and listened to Dean brush his teeth.

He padded softly back to his bed and she heard the mattress creak. “Ever been in an earthquake?” She asked.

“Nah. Couple’a hurricanes, though. That fucking sucks. Too much fucking water,” he grunted.

“Hmm,” she said. “I like the rain.”

“Kid, you don’t like it that much,” Dean said, but by then she had drifted far enough away that the words were lost on her as she melted away to sleep.

***

She woke up and everything was dark. She was cocooned in a fluffy blanket but she couldn’t remember why she wasn’t in her own bed with the blue blanket. She reached for a stuffed animal and didn’t find one. She blinked until her eyes adjusted. What day was it. It was Friday. Or Saturday. She was…

She heard a riffle of snoring from the other bed,

Oh. Right. She reached blindly around inside the bed for her phone, finding it to be 5 am and 30% battery. When did they have to be on the road? Seven? Seven-thirty? Maybe Carmella would know.

She sat up and the snoring turned into a murmur and a grunt.

“Thanks for the company, Dean,” she said quietly. She felt her pocket for the key card to her room and got up.

Then she walked straight into Dean’s suitcase on the stand, knocking it over with a huge crash and banging her toe.

“Fuck,” she said.

“What? Wassat?” Dean said. He flicked on a light. Alexa sat there next to an upended pile of black tee shirts and jeans and his socks and underwear and...ugh. Her face flushed with embarrassment but she sat there frozen not knowing what to do.

“If you were out of laundry, you could have just asked,” Dean said, getting up. “I’ll give you the shirt off my back, kid, you know I would.”

He came over and knelt down next to her. “No big deal. Here, let’s turn it over. There. Just pile all this shit back in, it wasn’t really folded to start with. There we go.”

She shook off her daze and helped him re-pack. Then he helped her get up. “Heading out?” he asked.

She nodded. “Thanks for.” She gestured in a circle. “You know.” 

“Any time, Jan,” he said with a sleepy grin. He walked her to the door and turned around. They were close. He looked at her, squinting.

“Hug it out?” he said, offering an open-armed gesture.

“Fucking a,” she said, shaking her head but reaching for him. They hugged. Alexa put her head against his chest and breathed out. She felt like she could stay in that moment a long time, propped up by the column of Dean’s body, but she broke away.

“Night,” she said, opening the door and backing through it.

He gave her a nod as the door clicked shut.

She looked up to see Carmella, grinning with wide eyes, her keycard sitting in the lock. “Girl,” she said.

Alexa rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing.”

“Whose room is that?” Carmella asked.

Alexa folded her arms and ignored the question. “Did you even sleep?” she whispered.

Carmella shrugged. “Did you?”

The crease returned to the space between Alexa’s eyebrows. They both entered the hotel room silently. Alexa crawled back in her bed and threw the covers fully over her head. She reached out to plug her phone back in and set the alarm so she could at least get a little more sleep and blow off Carmella’s questions until the morning.

***

“It’s not like that,” Alexa protested.

“It never *starts* like that,” Carmella teased.

“I swear to god I will remove your organs if you breathe a word of this to anybody,” Alexa said, her eyes growing wide with alarm.

“Jeez, alright already, isn’t selling kidneys more my gimmick anyway?” Carmella put her hands up and took a step back. “S’long as he’s treating you alright I ain’t sayin’ nothin.”

“We’re friends. He treats me like a really good friend,” Alexa said. 

“I’m totally sure friendship is what he’s after. So sure.” Carmella walked off to go stand in line at the counter to check out of the hotel. Alexa felt a little hollowed out by her words, but she clenched her stomach and willed the fear to go away. He’s not trying to get something out of me, she thought. He understands. He’s got good boundaries. Except he was eavesdropping on me, right? But I was being loud. He doesn’t even try to touch me. Except when he does, but friends totally hug. Friends hug. It’s fine. Don’t let other people psych you out. You can trust your instincts (even though you never do). (Even though they led you wrong before.) (You were younger then.) (Not that much younger.)

She took a deep breath in through her nose and held it in. Blowing the air out, she thought of the look of recognition he gave her sometimes. It was enough. It had to be. You couldn’t go through life without trusting somebody once in a while. What did she have to lose?


	4. Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Alexa kill time at the airport, but they may have run out of time for something important.

Dean, Alexa found, was a good travel buddy. She was still riding with Carmella but she and Dean crossed paths on the road more often than not. He got in the habit of checking in with her, too. She wouldn’t have pegged him as a big texter, but he was, at least for her.

Somehow they both ended up stuck with a layover at SeaTac, longer than usual. “Who booked this shit?” Dean asked, looking at their tickets. Alexa laughed.

Dean was tapping his foot like a jackrabbit after about fifteen minutes into their efforts to kill some time.

“We should wander around,” Dean said.

“You don’t know how to be bored,” Alexa said. “First we have to get coffee and sit around and drink and judge all the people walking by.”

Dean frowned but he followed her to get in line at the Starbucks. It was a long line.

“See, we’re killing time already.”

“How come you know so much about being bored,” Dean said. “You haven’t even been traveling with us that long.”

“Years of practice,” she said, thinking back to long road trips and tense family vacations and college and cheerleading and how to pass a bunch of time in between places.

The people in front of them hustled a pair of elementary schoolers in front of them. The kids picked up and put down every single weird Starbucks checkout counter snack they could reach. Alexa glanced up at Dean, who looked jealous.

“Coffee, then sit with me, then we can walk around. It’s early. Let me have this.”

He leaned down to bump her with his shoulder. “Like I’d say no to you.” He paused. “About coffee, anyway. Can imagine plenty of other things I’d really say no to.”

“What, you don’t want an impromptu chest wax?” She asked.

“Nope,” Dean said.

“Airport makeover,” she said. “I’ve got my stuff with me.”

“Ah, now you’re talking,” Dean said. “Make me look real pretty.”

She let him pull her leg. She thought. Maybe not? “Where would we do it? I can’t take you into the bathroom with me like Nia.” She felt a pang as she said Nia’s name, thinking about how long it had been since they talked, she was a terrible friend, a terrible everything...no, not now, she told her brain.

“C’mon, this is Seattle. There’s gotta be an all-gender restroom or some shit around here somewhere. They gotta be at least a little good about that.”

Alexa caught herself scowling in surprise as she came up to the counter. Dean stood close behind her. He casually leaned against the counter, framing her right side, and she could see his grin out of the corner of her eye without turning her head to acknowledge him. She rolled her eyes, her eyes’ natural motion (every time she did it she wondered if they’d roll right out of her head like her mom always said) and ordered a venti iced coffee, lightly sweetened, splash of cream. Dean leaned over as she stepped to the side.

“I want a grande mocha with eight pumps of chocolate and one pump of. What have you got. Peppermint? Hint of peppermint. These are together.” He got out his wallet as Alexa stared, horrified. The barista had a hard time getting all the syrup to dissolve, but with an extra splash of hot water it came together, almost like a cup of fondue. It almost didn’t occur to her that she had meant to pay for her own coffee. Why did it sting? He didn’t even ask.

They walked over to an open table and sat across from each other.

“You don’t have to buy my drinks,” she said with a soft glare.

“I don’t have to, I want to.”

“Don’t give me that benevolent sexism crap. Unless you buy all your coworkers drinks for them, all the time?” She leaned in conspiratorially and also so she could swear. “And *I don’t* believe you were treating Seth Rollins to pumpkin spice lattes on the regular, I don’t fucking believe it, so unless you *were* doing that, I’m buying the next round.”

Dean leaned back in his compact aluminum chair, slinging an arm over the railing that divided the Starbucks seating area from the gate. He tilted his head, looking at her a little sideways, smiling a little shaking his head. “You don’t know anything about Seth Rollins, but sure, sorry. I’d love for you to buy the next round.”

She huffed a sigh. “You didn’t even ask. Like, just ask when you’re going to do things.”

“Okay,” he said. He swigged his drink. “Not bad,” he coughed.

“You’re drinking an Andes Mint. How,” she said. “How is that a thing.”

Dean shrugged again. “Gotta kill time somehow.”

She sipped through her straw demurely, swallowed, tossed her hair, looked haughtily at the sweaty irritated masses. A couple held hands and ran dragging matching red suitcases behind them. They very nearly clotheslined a security guard. A small child ran the wrong way on a moving sidewalk and giggled as he was spat out the other end and was scooped up by his mom. Well. Could be his mom, could be an auntie, could be his grandma, who even knew?

Alexa glanced back at Dean and he was watching the little boy too, now surrounded by two women clucking at him, one zipping his little hoodie up and one ruffling his hair and re-playing the video she took of him on her phone.

Dean caught her eye and they were both transported, a little bit wrapped up in the drama of a stranger.

“I told you people watching is fun,” she said.

“You did,” he said, smiling a little into his drink.

They spent some more time watching the crowd move, watching a flight to France board, watching people get off from a red eye. Someone’s suitcase broke open, spilling tee shirts everywhere, and Dean jumped up to help until three other closer people rushed over to help the guy. He sat back down.

Alexa slurped and the empty cup rattled, air sucking through nothing but ice left. Dean turned to look at her, laughing. He shotgunned the end of his sludgy mocha, getting some chocolate on his face in the process, then slammed the empty cup down. “OK Bliss, where to next?”

She thought. “Well, there’s a concourse that has pretty good shopping. Lots of stuff to look at. We could wander that way.”

Dean got up and grabbed his carry-on, slinging it over his shoulder, and she followed. She traveled with a children’s Disney Princess rolling suitcase because it was easier for her to pull behind her, given her height. She suddenly felt a little awkward at the height difference between her and Dean, the aesthetic difference, her pigtails and his leather jacket.

He turned and looked back at her. “Just waiting on you, Bliss.”

She caught up.

“We make quite a pair,” he said, looking at her suitcase.

“I have sudden visions of being mistaken for your kid.”

He looked skeptical. “You look young but not that young.”

“Do you know the last time I was offered a kids’ menu?”

He shook his head as she sped up to get in front of him, walking the direction she remembered from being in this airport during the last NXT tour she had been on.

“February,” she said. “This year. Part of why I cultivated my.” She stopped. What was it? “My...”

“Your gimmick,” Dean said easily. “It’s cool. I understand. I got carded for a long time too.”

“For buying lotto tickets?” She shot back.

“....well, for buying cigarettes,” he offered.

She sighed. “OK. Yeah. It’s weird.”

They stopped in an atrium. Someone was playing Stairway to Heaven on a grand piano, and Alexa thought she smelled pot. White Christmas lights twinkled in some trees.

They wandered some more without talking, Dean following Alexa as she made a beeline for a trinkets store. They sold tiny plastic hands, colorful scarves, novelty earrings, hand puppets, mugs that said SEATTLE in blocky letters, mugs that didn’t say Seattle, coloring books for adults, crayons for adults. Dean flipped through a coloring book of cool dragons. Alexa held some very realistic spider earrings up to her face and looked in a tilted mirror. She saw him behind her, looking unguarded and invested.

“Do you want a coloring book?” she asked.

“Wha?” He looked up.

“I did say I’d buy the next round.”

He handed it over. He also bit his lip and handed her a package of crayons.

“Good choice,” she said.

She got the earrings. She put them on as they walked around some more. Dean stuck his hand through the plastic handles of the bag that held his coloring book.

They made a slow circle around everywhere they could reach without getting on a train, lazily reading the menus of overpriced airport restaurants and drifting closer to each other and farther away.

Their sides brushed as they looked at a Thai-Cuban fusion burger joint and heckled the menu, quietly.  


*****

“Look, isn’t that one of the good makeup stores,” Dean said, gesturing with his head.

Alexa looked—was there a MAC store in SeaTac? Apparently there was. “You owe me a pair of eyelashes,” she said. “Wanna see what they got?”

Dean veered left and made a beeline for the store without any further discussion. Alexa followed, one of the wheels of her suitcase catching and nearly knocking her over. She righted herself and caught up to Dean, who was squinting at the labeling on a bunch of packages of eyeshadow.

“Could you, like, do a watercolor with this shit too?” Dean asked her.

She cocked an eyebrow. “Well, yeah. Kind of a waste, though.”

“Have you ever done it?”

She thought about it. “Yeah, but not with the nice stuff. I’m pretty sure I’ve done some drawings in Wet ‘n’ Wild at some point.”

“You do really know how to be bored,” Dean said with a grin.

The store was small and packed with vertical rows of cosmetics. Alexa brushed against Dean to move past him, running a hand over a display of lip color before she got to the false eyelashes. She looked at a Star Trek themed pair, v-shaped and very dramatic.

“Do you want those ones?” Dean asked.

“I’m not sure I could wear these,” she said. “My face is too small.”

“Could *I* wear them?” Dean asked.

She pondered a little, looking up at him. She reached up to take his chin in her hand and tilt his face down. He suppressed a grin as she examined his face.

“You could,” she said finally, “but they’re not very Dolly Parton.”

Dean’s eyes got wide, like she caught him. He smiled. “Wanna show me which ones are better? You’re the boss.”

She smiled tightly. “I guess I am,” she said. “Here.” She picked up her usual type, the number 36, but she contemplated the display with Dean’s face in mind. She snatched a number four. “These are wispy and they add drama but they’re natural looking, too. They’re a great place to start if you’ve never worn falsies before.” She paused. “*Have* you ever worn falsies before?”

“Not that I remember, but my twenties were a wild time, baby,” he said, brushing his hair back from his face and looking sheepish. He put his hand out.

She put the two boxes in and closed his fingers around them. “Let me look at the nail polish and then I think I’m done.”

Alexa browsed, taking a picture of a few things with her phone to buy later when she wouldn’t have to lug it around on an airplane. She caught Dean’s eye and he stopped his conversation with the elaborately made-up guy behind the counter. Dean handed over the two boxes and leaned on the counter. By the time she made it over, he was handing the guy a wad of cash. Dean grabbed the change and the tiny bag and his suitcase, and held out his elbow for Alexa. She rolled her eyes, but she also smiled and took it.

They had to separate to actually be able to get out of the store, but she took his arm again. “Why do you do this?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“The elbow thing.”

“Well, you never seemed like a big hand holder,” he said, looking skyward like the answer was written on the vaulted ceiling. “And I don’t want to lose you.”

She felt a tightness in her sternum when he said that.

“What time is it?” Dean asked.

They stopped so she could check her phone. “Five till. Shoot, our flight is boarding soon.”

“We killed that time dead,” Dean said. “Let’s go, Bliss.”

“No time for that airport makeover,” she said sadly.

“I’ll take a rain check,” Dean said. “What are you doing tonight?”  


**Author's Note:**

> At one point I thought this was a prequel to my other blissbrose stuff but...I don't think it actually is. This is its own thing.


End file.
